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Kuriotates
Background The nucleus of the Kuriotates was formed in the harrowing years between the end of the Age of Ice and the dawn of the Age of Rebirth. Squabbling tribes, clans, warlords and embryonic city-states were gathered into a small nation led by the boy-king Cardith Lorda. It is in this background that we find the secret behind the Kuriotates' rather odd societal structure. All these diverse elements gathered together in a sheltered and bountiful land, and started to forge a state that could survive in a dangerous world. However, the mutual distrust between all the clans, families and dynasties Cardith Lorda brought together means that they will not suffer another to grow more powerful than they are. In effect, the lower levels of government in the core regions are marked by a form of democracy, watched over by a royal administration with complete control. Thus, all expansion is conducted by the King, and by him alone, and all territory is royal territory. The army swears allegiance to the king alone, and all administrative functions flow from the state rather than a master-servant system. There is no feudal system among the Kuriotates. The powerful live in the cities, and compete for positions there. In the outlying areas, the powerful are only powerful by royal decree, and Cardith Lorda's careful machinations ensures that it stays that way. Thus arose the system of settlements. The Kuriotates are a confederation of peoples and races, marked by a very powerful core region, vast areas more loosely connected to the core cities, and full freedom of asylum, even citizenship, for those who wish to move from other nations or the wilderness of uncivilised territory. The settlements, controlled solely by the central administration (i.e. Cardith Lorda's government) act as administrative centers, tying vast areas, often with their own highly advanced semi-autonomous indigenous populations, into the Kuriotate confederacy. The settlements provide facilities for transit, trade, administration and diplomacy in the affiliated regions, but never develop a very large population of pure Kuriotates. They are mostly populated by bureaucrats, merchants, a handful of soldiers and their families and the most promising born here quickly relocate to the central cities. A system of trade and friendship with their centre on the small Kuriotate settlements keeps the hodge-podge of allies, protectorates, semi-autonomies and client states happy and ensures that much-needed resources continue to flow to the core lands. The vast areas with sparse human population that get locked within the Kuriotates' disproportionately large sphere of influence and cultural domination mean that they get in contact with many of the rarer species of Erebus. For many civilizations, that might prove problematic, even act as a source of conflict and destruction. For the Kuriotates, it is a boon, and a source of their strength. For the Kuriotates don't much care who you are as long as you have something meaningful to offer to the nation as a whole. The Kuriotates' particularly positive relationship to the non-human species of Erebus dates back to the very beginnings of the confederation, when a small group of Centaurs aided Cardith Lorda in his rise to power. Other creatures, attracted by the special power they detect in the boy king, have since flocked to the Kuriotate banner, escaping marginalization or even persecution in other parts of the world. The Centaurs, having risen to be a force to be reckoned with in Kuriotate political life, smooth their transition and integration into the society, putting their special skills to good use in the areas at which they excel, through innate ability or cultural conditioning. The culture of the Kuriotates is such that the demi-humans are treated as, and indeed regarded as being, equal to the human majority, and judged by merit and benefit to the nation alone, although the fundamental differences between the races mean that some measure of distinction is necessary in order to allow the Kuriotate nation to run smoothly. However, again this may be a secret benefit. This specialization and segregation has given rise to something akin to a Caste system, another reason the Kuriotates have such a stable central government. While the humans are the jack of all trades, each of the races have found their niche, dominating their own area. The Centaurs, the warrior caste, hold many high positions in the army, the Lamia wield great magical power, and command respect among the magi, and so on. Since all these subcultures owe allegiance to the king alone, they act, in their specialized roles, as an effective bulwark against the ambitions of human noblemen. Those few dissidents who let their resentment at being bypassed be channeled into irrational hatred of demi-humans are held in check by strong personal trust in Cardith Lorda and an emphasis on the state religion, not to mention state superstition and traditions. Few Kuriotates dare cross or even question the will of the state, the will of the people of the confederation, and most importantly, the will of the divine Boy-King. The Kuriotates hold loose sway over a massive sprawl of an empire, but the borders are porous, and when war threatens, they will often act as a turtle, retreating into the hard shell of their core lands until they can muster the forces to take back that which was lost. Thus, the Kuriotates through their openness to others, strong central authority and large but loose sphere of influence have a flexibility many of their opponents lack. Truly, they are one of the centers of enlightenment in the dark of Erebus. Features * Cities have plot radius 3 instead of 2. You still have to wait for cultural growth of borders. *Limited number of cities depending on map size: **Duel Map: 2 **Tiny Map: 2 **Small Map: 3 **Standard Map: 3 **Large Map: 4 **Huge Map: 5 *Each city settled or conquered after reaching maximum will automatically become Settlement. ' *'Settlements are 1-pop cities that cannot queue any production in the cities' production bar and have a single citizen able to work. They do not produce culture, units or buildings. They do use trade routes and benefit for empire-wise bonus on trade routes. *Expand the borders of the settlments is problematic: you may use a free specialist civic, sacrifice a disciple unit to have culture, or use your World Spell. *The world spell Legends help in getting the needed cultural growth. Use it early, as soon as you have 3 cities, or wait till you have all the needed settelment in place, because they do not normally grow. *If a City is lost or donated to other player, a slot is freed, and a settlement may be promoted to city. Alternatively a new city may be founded or conquered. *Cottage may improve to unique Enclave improvement. Kuriotate only, town upgrade, grants +1 gold and +1 food over towns (added in FFH2 v0.32, art by Woodelf, idea by TheJopa). *Some MODMOD like MNAI allow to decide, with every new City, if you will be a City or a Settlement. It is useful because you may not simply demote a City to free a slot. Unique units and buildings Many races have found refugee among the Kurio. The never aging sovereign of the Kuriotates Empire, Cardith Lorda, the Boy King, seems quite human, but he reveals eventually as a Gold Dragon if need commands it. The arcane arts are dominion of the Lamia. Centaurs joined the Kurio and form the backbone of the army as a strong and easy to built corp of Cavalry. *May build Tailor building for happiness and commerce boosts from Dye, Cotton, and Silk. Also produce fine cloth, an exclusive luxury resources. *Centaurs will cover all the cavalry role. They share some characteristic: they do not need resources or buildings, like horses, Nightmare, Stable of Siege Workshop. *Horseback Riding unlock Centaurs, a strong unit that substitute Horseman but does not need horses or stable to be built and may receive defensive bonus. *Centaurs are 4/3 unit and have +40% vs Archery Units and +25% Withdrawal Chance, just like the Horseman but with a first strike less. But the ability to receive denfensive bonus make them very effective in all roles. *Centaur Archer are 6/3 units with +35% Withdrawal Chance and Immune to First Strikes, just like the counterpart Hore Archer but with a first strike less and ability to receive denfensive bonus. *Centaur Charger are 5/3 units, quite the same as Chariot. *May build special supplement navy unit, Airship, a vessel able to fly over mountains (added in FFH2 v0.34,). This feature help mitigate the need to build one of the three city on the coast to be able to build ships and sail the seas: often it is preferable to settle the 3-radius megacity in the center of great plains with some hill, avoiding low output tile. *Herne is a super Centaur hero, 11/3, that start with Blitz and 25% Withdrawal Chance. He is gained at Warhorses as the War Chariot (12/9, 3move, 25% Withdrawal Chance, 50% vs Archery Units) *Eurabatres the Gold Dragon is the most powerful unit in game, it may fly over mountain and take undifended cities from the back. But it comes too late in game to win wars on his own. Fortunately he may bring along some Airship. Strategies The Kuriotates have a head start in playing for a Cultural Victory, but this is by no means the only way to victory. In particular, researching Horseback Riding and Stirrups is particularly effective for a warmongering Kuriotates player for access to Centaurs and Centaur Archers respectively. The advantage of these Mounted units is that, unlike other Mounted units (e.g. Horseman and Horse Archers that they replace) they receive a defensive bonus, making them perfect for both fast-moving raiding force, a strong invasion, as well as a sturdy defense for cities. Note that although any production/food/commerce produced by the 1 population point working any tile in the city will not be added to your empire, consider using a Priest of any religion to found a temple in the city--any Commerce, Science, or Culture generated by a specialist will be added to your empire, thus allowing you to make use of the 1 population point instead of having it produce nothing. #Legends is an early world spell. Use it as soon as you have founded your 3 cities to get your plot radius 3 for your cities. #Cardith Lorda is an adaptive leader, so you will be able to choose a new trait after 100 turns. #Build your tailors and jewelers to get goods that no one else can produce and trade them for other luxuries that you thrive on, dye-silk-cotton and gold-gems-silver Multiple production problem A major problem is that you can't build more than 1 unit per turn, also if you have production sufficient for more. Your cites have the burden to protect all your settlements and have to crank out units, and your main production city in late game will waste a lot of surplus production. Most elegant solution is to install a MOD to be able to build more than 1 unit per tunr, if production suffice: Multiple Production Mod https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/multiple-production-mod.326545/ Many recent MODMOD are incorporating Multiple Production Mod, in example in MNAI v2.71 you will have it availabe as last Option during game creation. Pay attention, it is disabled as default. Some workarounds: # During wars it is possible to swap to OO and use slavery civic for spamming OO units via slaves. # You may use the Basium Alliance strategy. City specialization strategy Kurios are all about city specialization, you'll only have 3 megacities (standard map) and you gotta get the most out of them. The 3 cities will specialize in commerce, production and great peoples. Commerce capital * your capital should be placed so that it will become a uber commerce city, so rivers, and enough food to cottage every tile in sight. * enclaves are awesome but take a lot to get, so you need to start building cottages ASAP. Get education early and start building cottages like there's no tomorrow, the sooner you build them the sooner you'll have enclaves. * if done correctly, you don't even have to build a single cottage in your other 2 cities, so you'll only have 1 city which is vulnerable to pillaging. * keep some centaurs on nearby hills to look out for potential mischievous bastards, and take advantage of their crazy speed to kill them before they reach your tender, juicy cottages. Production and GP farm cities Aside from the capitol, you'll have 2 other cities: one is all about production (heroic epic plus wonders when possible) and one which should be heavily farmed and used as a GP farm. * do go 100% science and keep all your science in your first, cottagespammed city, with an academy it will become crazy soon enough. * since you only have three cities, you can't afford to suboptimal build order. Luckily, your cities will be so specialized that it will be easy to tell useful buildings from useless ones. Centaurs are fantastic. strong, fast, and they get defensive bonuses. They are pretty much perfect, no weakness at all. spam them, love them, do go up the horseback line because if you play it right centaur archers will be available soon, en masse and kickass. eh, that rhymes. God King You WILL want to run God King all game and change your capitol from your first city. here comes the one big dilemma: GK boosts gold and hammers. hammers is easy, you have a city which is all about that. Gold, since you'll be at 100% science, comes from Merchants and Holy Temples. Evaluate your game and choose where to place your palace in order to get the most out of GK. the choice is easy, either your production city or your specialist city, where you'll want to go merchant heavy if you place your capital there. don't be afraid to move your capital more than once if needed. However, this will soon become suboptimal too. we all know how awesome the Bazaar of Mammon can get, so you'll want to build it soon, and after that you will want to move your capital there and not move it anymore. +150% gold? yes please! :D Since GK boosts both hammers AND gold, I'm not a fan of placing the capital+bazaar in my GP city. which brings me to the next important issue for the Kurios, RELIGION. Religion Strategy You will have lots of settlements, there's just no reason not to do that since you can also build settlers quickly thanx to expansive. normally, they are useless aside from resources. normally, that is. you WILL want to eventually adopt each religion in the game, and have one temple of each religion in each settlement. This will also give you specialist slots, settlements can benefit from specialists ( one specialist for each settlment actually ) but not from tile yields. Second, do try to found as many religions as possible ASAP. With all the religions you'll spread around, holy buildings will give a crapload of gold. Gold, the one that gets a nice boost from GK+Bazaar... if you can get a holy building in your hammer city, you're set. more than one, you'll be Uber :lol: The problem is that this strategy is dependent on luck since you can never really know where religions will spawn. they tend to spawn in the most populous non-capitol city though, so do try to manipulate them into where you want them ;) Of course, different strategies are also available, depending on the situation. you could use scientists as your main science production, guilds to specialize your GP city as much as possible ( or even mercantilism for infinite merchants+bazaar+GK , but mercantilism is generally not a great civic ) ... honestly, the possibilites are many, as is often the case in FFH :) With all that religion switching, you'll hardly get heroes, but if you can pull it off ( hard ) I like Empy as a state religion, since you WILL be outnumbered by opponents and Chalid fits that fighting theme very well. Alternative specialization setting An alternative to specialize city is: # GK capitol, # Heroic Epic, # Science City. One city is the GK capitol, one is the heroic epic, and one is the science city. Capitol has production and gold, makes wonders and buildings. Other two make Centaurs. Enclave spamming The Enclave improvements makes cottage spamming mandatory. But it is possible to leave 8 or so tiles of non-river plains forest around each city, lumbermill them, and then spend a bit of extra time in FoL when religion hopping for the settlements to convert all the forests to Ancient Forest for 2 food / 3 hammers tiles plus a couple health. I also go financial on my first transition then aristograrian. You still build mostly cottages for your economy, but the extra 2:commerce: from the 15ish farms in each city provide a substantial science boost to power you through the middle of the tech tree and switch back to GK once you hit Guilds (or whatever). Basium ally It is a viable strategy to rush for Mercurians and donate to Basium all the settlements, keeping only the large Cities. A close alliance: Kuriotates concentrate on economy and building, while Basium concentrate on war and units. * The city with Mercurian Gate is lost to Basium. It has to be reibilt. For Kuriotates this is quite a big blow, expecally on small maps. * The lost city may be continuously rebuit and donated to Basium with some base building, keeping the last slot as a vacant. * A strong alliance and cooperation with Basium is mandatory. * You may retain control on Kuriotates and focus on economy, or take control of Basium and wage war. * If the AI does not cooperate to your plan, you may temporary switch back using Worldbuilder to perform quick actions, like declaring war or gifting settlements. * Every existing settlement, new settlement or conquered city is donated to Basium. Modding number of cities Many think that in Huge maps, while game progress, Kuriotates limits are too severe. You may resolve with the Basium alliance turnaround, but if you prefer to see the Gold Dragon and his powerful flying vessel dominate Huge maps with no breach of the Compact, you may simply modify the iMaxCities variable. Standard value are: Remmber that the Map Size categories are quite subjective and may change drammatically with the MapScript you use. So don't be ashamed to tweak the number for your particular MODMOD, Mapscrpt and gameplay. In example you may try those numbers, that exagerate the Huge Map value because the MapScript I use have an insane number of tiles, there is always free unexplored space for AI to expand and containemnet strategies are not usable: To perform the mod: # Edit the file ...\Sid Meier's Civilization IV Beyond the Sword\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Fall from Heaven 2\Assets\XML\Civilizations\CIV4TraitInfos.xml # Under TRAIT_SPRAWLING find the line 3'' # Change 3 with the maximum number you wish in standard map. # Edit the file ''...\Sid Meier's Civilization IV Beyond the Sword\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Fall from Heaven 2\Assets\XML\Gameinfo\CIV4WorldInfo.xml # Under WORLDSIZE_DUEL find the line ''-1'' # Chage ''-1'' with your desired modifer per Duel mapsize # Repeat per other mapsizes. See also * this post in the Your Top Ten Tips for Your Favorite Civ thread. * https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/how-to-give-the-kuriotates-more-cities.622225/ category:Civilizations